WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Is source ordered content accessible?

for

From: Richard R. Hill
Date: Dec 13, 2010 10:18AM

There have been some discussion here on this topic in the past, but time moves on and so do the interpretations of what is and is not accessible.

If I place my main content at the top of the (X)XHTML source code with other elements appearing after and use CSS to visually place the elements visually on a page, will this cause accessibility issues?

So, the source may look like:

Header
Main content
Sidebar content
Site navigation
Page navigation
Footer

And the visual page (three column layout):

Header
Site Navigation
Page Navigation:Main Content:Sidebar Content
Footer

My concern is that by convention, this may be jarring to folks using AT to navigate the page. Visual page order and source code order don't match, so potential issues exist when folks with different (or no) disabilities or different browsers attempt to collaborate. Skip navigation link labels may be confusing (Skip to Navigation rather than Skip to Content). May be forced to define tab-order, since the default order when not necessarily make sense. Plus, WCAG 2.0 section 1.3.2 seems to imply that its best to have the visual layout match the code layout.

What's the current take on this?